by C. C. Lynch
I straightened my back and focused on the target. Vlaine moved closer and positioned himself as he had before.
“Ready?” he let go of my right hand so I could put it on top of his instead.
No, I thought, nowhere close to ready. My breathing was faster, my hands were shaky, and it felt like I would be frozen like that forever. Part of me wanted to stay there indefinitely, practically being held by Vlaine.
He moved his face, his lips just beside my ear, “you’ve got this. Just calm your mind and focus on replicating my gift.”
His breath tickled my ear and my knees wobbled underneath me. Focus Abrielle, I cheered myself on, focus on making that arrow the hand that the blast comes from.
Vlaine pulled the string back to my anchor point and held it there for a moment allowing me to concentrate on my visualization. He counted down from three and let an arrow go. I watched the arrow move through the air, focusing on the point just before it hit the target. Another arrow flew through the air and I had the motion of Vlaine’s arrows memorized. The next one I would try sending a blast from.
Vlaine released the arrow and just before it hit the target the arrow burst into hundreds of shards. My jaw dropped and I turned to face Vlaine, thrilled with my accomplishment.
“No way,” he laughed in disbelief, “I thought for sure my hands were going to be blown to bits.”
“Thank you for the unwavering confidence,” I chuckled. “Let’s keep going,” I grabbed his hands and put them around me once more.
Eager, I heard him think as he held the bow sturdy in my hands once more. My face flushed when I realized how compulsive I had been.
“Sorry for being ‘eager,’” I used air quotes, “I was just excited to try it again.”
“What?” He leaned back and I turned to face him. Even though he had leaned away from me our noses were nearly touching. I edged backwards though his hands were still on mine.
“You said, or thought, the word ‘eager’ and I realized how awkward it was that I just grabbed you.” His hands fell from me and he took a step back. “What?” I felt like a criminal, like I had done something appalling.
“I thought it to myself, but I never directed it to you. You should have had to break the wall down to have heard that.” His brows were furrowed.
“Are you saying that I actually read something from you?” He gave a quick nod in response. “Yes!” I jumped up with excitement. “I actually read you and I wasn’t even trying to! This may be the best day I’ve ever had.”
I shot a victory arrow towards the target that exploded just before hitting it. “I did that and I read you.” His expression was contemplative and I gave him a reassuring pat, “I couldn’t have hurt your pride that badly. Try to be proud of me.”
He shook his head then smiled, “I am, you’re just catching on a lot faster than I thought you would.”
“Don’t worry Vlaine, I’ll try not to take that too personally.”
We practiced for two more hours in an equally as intimate position while I exploded arrows. The exhilarating feeling of watching the arrows explode was starting to wear off. Vlaine readjusted his head next to mine and I could feel his eyelashes flicker against my skin. Once again I was aware of how close he was to me, his chest and torso on my back, the warmth of his breath from his face being mere centimeters from mine. I focused on his breathing as he released the string. I imagined our hands being the pile of the arrow. Boom. The center of the target exploded. Shreds of canvas and foam were scattered about the field.
Cold air against my back startled me from my catatonia. Vlaine looked just as shocked as I did. He started laughing and tossed the bow to the ground.
“Holy crap Abbs, you did it! We have got to get dad and Draxe down here.” He pulled out his phone and called his brother and told him to get Osiris and come down the field behind the gym.
Vlaine ran back inside to retrieve more targets and started setting them up. Draxe and Osiris pulled onto the field in a black pick-up truck within a matter of minutes. Excitedly, Vlaine waved them over. “We haven’t done it with her shooting the arrow yet, but watch this!”
Vlaine stood against my back, slid his hands on mine, and readied the arrow.
“That’s a bit intimate,” Draxe scoffed.
Vlaine paid no mind, just pulled the string back. I focused on him as I had before; his proximity, the warmth from him, his smell. He smelled amazing. I shook my head of the obsessive thought and focused on our hands. His left hand covered my right and the opposite was true for the other hand. He released the string and once again I imagined our hands as the pile of the arrow. Boom. The center of the target exploded.
I jumped away from Vlaine and looked at Draxe and Osiris for approval. “Holy crap, Abrielle, that was awesome! Dad did you know someone could do that?” Draxe was just as excited as Vlaine and I had been.
“Abrielle, try it without the assistance of Vlaine.” Osiris nodded and crossed his hands in front of him.
I picked up the bow and shot a practice arrow into a new target. I breathed deeply and completed the visualization, imagining my hand as the arrow pile. The arrow exploded into shards. Loosening my neck I pulled out another arrow. This time I would do it exactly as I had when Vlaine was holding me. Pulling back to my anchor point I imagined both of our hands as the arrow pile. “Boom,” I muttered as a hole blew through the center of the target.
“Brilliant,” Osiris clapped his hands together. “Marvelous work, Abrielle.”
“Now we definitely can’t let Jeremiah get his hands on you!” Draxe laughed as he jogged over to the exploded target.
“Before I was simply a bag of old clothes set out for charity but now, now I’m worthy of keeping, Draxe?” I walked by his side and picked up the few arrows that were still intact.
He laughed and tousled my hair, “sorry Abrielle, you know what I meant.” It was an endearing little sister treatment. It made me feel accepted that neither Vlaine nor Draxe seemed to hold me at a distance in front of their father.
Osiris cleared his throat and straightened out his jacket, “we will have a meeting today at three. Until the meeting I would like you to keep practicing. Wonderful work, all of you.”
Draxe caught up to him and they drove off leaving Vlaine and me to continue practicing.
I played around with my visualization and exploded three more targets before I asked Vlaine if he could help me with my barrier. Adrenaline was the only thing keeping me from dying of embarrassment knowing that he was surely able to read my every thought while practicing that morning. His stance never faltered and he never addressed those thoughts and though I should have been relieved, I was more frustrated than anything. A simple ‘I’m sorry but I just don’t feel the same,’ or, even better, a ‘we’re on the same page here, Abbs’ would have been beneficial.
Burning sensations tingled along my fingers and toes as the heat from the gym thawed my extremities. We went into the room with the snack bar where the light in the small space would heat the room to a more reasonable temperature than the basketball court would reach.
My barrier was weak but my concentration was growing stronger. By the end of the session the longest I could keep him out of my thoughts was just shy of two minutes. Before going to our meeting I called Nicholas back but the phone went straight to his voicemail. I sent Steph a text message asking her to let Nicholas know he pocket dialed me and I would call him later. As Vlaine and I were walking I received a message from Steph saying that Nicholas hadn’t gone to school that day but she would swing by his house later to check on him.
Osiris was sitting calmly in his chair dressed in a freshly pressed grey suit. I never saw him leave the school but for all I knew Osiris took trips on a daily basis that warranted a perfectly tailored three-piece ensemble. It was strange how he was always so dapper. I wondered if it was an effort to demand respect and apprehension from the students or if he had meetings where the proper attire was business formal.
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��Colleagues of mine have seen individuals known to work with Jeremiah at Blyden and Aldershaw within the past week.”
My mouth dropped, “Blyden, as in Blyden High School?”
Blyden High was where I went before I attended Glaston Academy. It was where Vlaine had scouted me for months before I was inducted into Glaston.
“Yes, Abrielle, and I am sure that you can imagine the theories that my colleagues and I have developed considering these rather flagitious individuals have made appearances that were a bit obvious rather than the surreptitious methods Jeremiah is known for.”
Osiris always spoke in a manner that made me feel inferior. Perhaps it was a belittling tactic to keep students fearful. “I apologize for being an abecedarian in here, but what is Aldershaw?”
“One of the schools,” Draxe spoke now. “There is Glaston, Lanshaw, Aldershaw, Intervael, Valdor, and Ernvlik. They are in New York, New Mexico, Scotland, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Alaska respectively.”
I thanked him and tried to memorize what he had just told me. Professor Horicon and Erik made sure they knew I was here so why would they go to Blyden High or Scotland? I figured Scotland must have had something to do with another student they wanted. The only other person at Blyden High was Samantha, but as far as I knew she was only a telepath.
“Abrielle, dear, what can you tell me about your father?” Osiris’s tone was gentle.
“Dear?” I arched my brow at his attempt to be engaging. “Please refrain from any terms of endearment, Headmaster Josnic. I appreciate your sensitivity towards the subject, but I don’t need any sympathetic sobriquets.” I sighed and straightened my back, “I have some pictures with Curtis from when I was a baby but he left when I was two. All I have is a name and some old photographs. Cherie Abbott is my mother and tried to fill in for the father role as best she could.”
My father was a touchy subject. The pain of neglect never stopped stinging and my mother refused to speak about him. She had kept the pictures of him as keepsakes, but that was all I knew about him. Hell, she would never even tell me his last name. She was a teenager when she had me and kept her last name and gave me hers. My birth certificate was kept in her safe and she never allowed me to touch it because she was terrified I would lose it and get my identity stolen.
“Very well,” Osiris stood up and walked to the panel where he had kept the folder of missing students.
“Dad, don’t.” Vlaine stood up abruptly. Osiris ignored Vlaine and continued with what he was doing before Vlaine’s outburst. “Dad!” Vlaine walked over to his father and took a folder out of Osiris’s hands and shoved it back into the drawer and closed the hidden panel.
“Come on Abbs,” Vlaine walked to my side and extended his hand towards me, “this meeting is over.”
Draxe stood, “Vlaine let him continue with the meeting.”
“No,” Vlaine growled, “this meeting can wait until after finals at least.”
“What is going on? What does this have to do with my father?” I looked around at the three men in the room waiting to see who would speak first. Osiris stood with a stiff upper lip, Draxe had sympathy smeared on his face, and Vlaine looked like he was about to pull a trigger. “Draxe,” I walked towards the one who would allow me to play off his sympathies, “what does this have to do with my father?”
He shrugged, “everything, maybe, or nothing, possibly.”
The vagueness of Draxe’s answer bore a pit in my stomach. “Osiris, please continue,” I waved my hand irritated. Vlaine punched the table and stormed out of the room.
I wanted to go after Vlaine, but if I had the uncertainty of where Osiris was going with the conversation would have been too much to bear. Osiris laid a green folder in front of me and sat down. “Your father was accepted into Valdor Academy when he was nineteen. He’s been a professor at Aldershaw Academy for the past decade. We suspect that Jeremiah’s men were in Scotland looking for him.”
“They should have known that my father isn’t involved in my life.”
I could not understand why they would want to go to my father but Osiris thought that my replication could be genetic. My father was known to be a healer and a telepath, but replication was rare but could be easily hidden or he could have been as unaware as I was.
The meeting ended with Osiris warning me about the dangers of Jeremiah and how the training I had done with Vlaine was vital to my safety. Jeremiah’s intentions were to create a less orthodox and much more violent version of the Hagan Think Tank. Not only did he want to exploit the abilities of others for his own financial gains but he wanted to manipulate the genetic material of people with different abilities. Osiris and Jeremiah were part of a particular genetic engineering sector of the research and development team at Hagan and Jeremiah had his own ideas that violated the principles of the think tank. Needless to say, a replicator like me would be the key to his research.
Osiris said that the sector was closed down when Jeremiah’s intentions were known and their friendship caused them both to lose their jobs. Jeremiah was debarred but Osiris was allowed a teaching position and he soon became a headmaster. I was still curious as to why Jeremiah would not just attack and grab Osiris for his replication abilities but he provided no answer to my query.
Just as the meeting was ending he asked Draxe to step outside so Osiris and I could speak privately. “I apologize for unscrupulous concerns,” he paced near the panel of hidden folders, “Vlaine is exceptionally strong but I am concerned about the affect your relationship will have on his safety.”
At first I was taken aback by his claim because I had assumed he meant a non-platonic relationship until I realized he was worried because Vlaine fought for his friends and when Jeremiah came for me he would undoubtedly fight to protect me.
“I understand your concern seeing how devastatingly loyal and protective he is when his friends are concerned, but the only consolation I can offer is that Vlaine is not in my vision.”
I left the room and did not wait for a reply. The more I thought about what he said, the more it bothered me. Once I was back in the hallway I pulled out my phone to call Vlaine but he turned the corner just as I was about to dial his number.
His hands were balled into fists and he was walking straight towards me. “I didn’t want you to find out like that,” his stance was still defensive but it was clear now that it was not me he was angry with.
“What, about my father? I don’t care about that right now. But your father had the audacity to tell me that he’s worried about our relationship getting you hurt in all this Jeremiah crap. Like I would ever intentionally put you or anyone else in a position to get hurt?” I crossed my arms in front of my chest, “so can you do me a favor and just leave the state or something when my vision comes true so that I don’t have to worry about your dad getting mad because we’re friends.”
Vlaine’s brow furrowed then he started laughing. “What is so funny, Vlaine? He said it like it was my fault, like I’m dangerous.” I stomped my heel churlishly, “and you know what, he is the one that had you be my teacher and he gets to decide what classes I take. Why would he have me paired with you like 60 hours of the week if I’m such a hazard? Argh!” I threw my hands up, infuriated.
“So you’re not mad because one of the academies pretty much took your dad from you when you were a baby and he’s been teaching in Scotland for most of your life and this life-altering bomb got dropped on you right before finals, but you are mad because my dad pointedly expressed concern for my safety?” He put his elbow up and leaned against the wall by my side, “and just to be clear, I asked my dad for permission to teach you. You were going to get put into a class with Professor Wylden.”
I felt ridiculous standing in front of Vlaine while he was laughing. I sighed and uncrossed my arms, “I never asked you to stand up to Tracy and I don’t know what made you do that dimension thing to that kid, but I’m sure no one asked you to do that either. He just made me feel like I’m a pernicious being.”
His eyebrows were raised in surprise and I rolled my eyes, “sorry for overreacting.”
“Who told you about the ‘fourth dimension thing’? That was a while ago.”
If he wanted to he could read me and find out the truth so there was no reason to cover up for Will when he probably would not be coming back to Glaston anyway. “Will told me about it when he was giving me the stay-away-from-Vlaine talk.”
“Will wasn’t a student at Glaston when that happened,” he stroked his jaw while replaying the memory in his head then shrugged it off. “I have something to show you that will make you feel better, I think.”
“Wait, I need to talk to you about some things since I am finally allowed to be part of these meetings.” He willingly agreed. I put my hands over my face in shame, “but first I need to know how often you read me.”
I kept my hands over my face while he answered. “Since October, just when we’re working on your barrier so I can see how you’re doing. I put mine up for privacy so I like to extend the same courtesy to my friends.”
I dropped my hands from my face slowly. “Let’s start from the beginning of the questions and work up to the most recent. I’m just going to do a speed round then answer them once I’m done. Why was Draxe ‘spying’ on our lessons that day? Why did you think your dad sent him and why would they have wanted Draxe to take over the class? What happened with Erik? Did he just disappear? Why is Jeremiah trying to get me and not your dad? We’ve had the same vision about me turning invisible now, what does that mean? I’m sure there are more that I have but those are the ones that have been on my mind.”
“Draxe was just curious because he knew you’re a replicator but I thought my dad was looking for reasons to send you into the think tank prematurely. Erik was alive, admitted that he was spying for Jeremiah and then disappeared the day the guys came in and attacked us. I’m sure that once Jeremiah has enough men he will try to take my dad, but my dad is very powerful and it isn’t going to happen easily. Did I cover everything? Oh, and I don’t know what us having the same vision means, it was probably just a coincidence.”